Professional background: retired in June as East Falmouth Elementary School principal; 13 years as Falmouth's affirmative action equity officer.

Other community work: created a youth mentoring program with the local NAACP and Concerned Black Men; organized Falmouth for membership in No Place for Hate, a national antidiscrimination association; launched annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast; worked with Falmouth Police Department and an independent consultant to respond to allegations of racial profiling.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast

9 a.m. to 11 a.m. today

Morse Pond School, 323 Jones Road, Falmouth

$15 for adults, $10 for students; tickets are available at the door

The program: includes Morse Pond student songs and a recitation of King's "I Have a Dream" speech; guests Keith Holmes and Rabbi Elias Lieberman; and honoring former East Falmouth Elementary School Principal George Spivey

Because of a reporting error, the original version of this story had incorrect information about Falmouth's affirmative action officer position. The first to serve in the role was Doreen Lawrence, who was followed by Jayme Dias and then Spivey, who retired last year.

When George Spivey was around 14 and growing up in southern New Jersey, the superintendent of his Sunday school, Arthur Jones, made a shocking prediction about the young man's future.

"He said, you're going to be a minister some day," recalls Spivey, now 67. "I said I didn't think that's going to happen because, at the time, I was more interested in girls and sports. The ministry, from what I could see ministers did — I wasn't into that."

In the most traditional sense of the word, Spivey didn't enter the ministry. He pursued a career in education, retiring as the principal at East Falmouth Elementary School last year. He also served as Falmouth's third affirmative action equity officer.

But in a broader definition, his whole life has been devoted to ministering. His message is one of education, of the importance of community and of racial and social justice.

"Arthur Jones saw something in me," said Spivey. "I've been trying to follow that lead."

Today Spivey will be honored by the Falmouth Clergy Association with its first award for human rights work and community leadership. The presentation will be at the group's seventh annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast — an event that, not coincidentally, Spivey initiated and plans each year.

"Because he has done so much for Cape Cod, not just Falmouth, for such a long period of time, we thought his retirement was a good time to acknowledge him," said the Rev. Robert Murphy of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Falmouth. "He's not received a lot of public recognition in the past. Because of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday, we felt this was the appropriate time."

Spivey was born in the Bronx but raised in Mizpah, N.J., then a rural community of 1,500 people about 26 miles from Atlantic City. It wasn't a town that garnered a lot of respect — the state tried to plunk both a dump and a federal youth prison there over the years, both times unsuccessfully.

But it was a town full of hard workers, a community where children minded their elders and always went to school and where the neighbors would take boxes of fresh fruits and vegetables to families unannounced.

"Growing up the hard way was probably the best way, because we had a lot of respect for one another," Spivey said. "Education was the most important, to parents and to the kids."

His quest for education took him to Hanover, N.H., where he spent four years at Dartmouth College at the height of the civil rights movement. He studied government and soaked in the lessons of King and Malcolm X, both of whom were assassinated during his studies. Spivey briefly studied law at Rutgers University before switching gears to study education, receiving his master's degree in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

His first connection to the Cape came in 1968, when he married Ruth Perry, an East Falmouth resident. He would later take a job at Barnstable High School in its alternative learning program. He left to get his master's degree, but came back and stayed when he got a job in Falmouth Public Schools, ending up as East Falmouth Elementary's principal.

His passion has taken him far beyond the walls of the school, including working with the Falmouth Police Department to provide sensitivity training in light of allegations of racial profiling. But it's been working with children that has brought him the most joy.

Scores of his students, both through East Falmouth Elementary and the mentoring program, have gone on to college because of his guidance and assistance.

That's what Mizpah did for him — a neighbor drove him to Dartmouth when Spivey started his studies. It's what communities do. And it's what Spivey does, every day.

"George is a perfect gentleman," said John Reed, former president of the Cape Cod NAACP chapter and president of the Zion Union Heritage Museum in Hyannis.

"He's one of these guys who goes out of his way to help people. Kids mainly, but in his time on Cape Cod, he's done a lot of things. ... He sees that people who need extra help and extra time to develop need an environment to do that. He provides the kind of leadership that allows people to bring out the best in themselves."